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Because they are ubiquitous and inescapable in our waking lives, and because they feel as if they are playing a causal role, it is very difficult for us to see that in reality our feelings are functionally superfluous (unless telekinesis<\/a> is true — which it is not).<\/p>\n (We have a similar difficulty reasoning about the origins and adaptive function of language<\/a>, because our brains are so deeply “language-prepared” that it is almost impossible for us to think of an object or state of affairs without “sub-titling” it with a verbal narrative.)<\/p>\n I think that Roger Lindsay<\/a>‘s tentative attempts to close the explanatory gap, below, are based on inadvertently begging the question, by endowing feeling with a (telekinetic) causal power (unexplained) a priori. (The same mistake is made if it is “reasons” to which you give the causal power. For reasons — though they too are felt — need not be felt: they can be functed, as computations or even dynamics. That reasons are felt rather than just functed is just another example of the problem.) I think you are also underestimating the nature and causal power of computation, and probably of dynamics too.<\/p>\n RL<\/b><\/a>: “your claims about the causal sufficiency of functs are certainly true of neonates [but this] decreases with age [and is] less obviously true of adults.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I am afraid you may have missed my point, which was definitely about adults! The point is that the full causal\/functional explanation is always sufficient to explain our performance and our performance capacity. The only thing it does not explain is how and why any of that functionality is felt.<\/p>\n RL:<\/b> “I have just touched my nose… It is not likely that my action resulted… from some coincidentally pre-existing causal state… [i.e.] not from Humean causes but from voluntary performance on the basis of reasons… [e.g.] love, or hate, or anger or jealousy?”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, the feeling that I do what I do because I “feel like” doing it — rather than because I am being buffeted about by underlying neurological causes — is the heart of the mind\/body problem (hence also of the feeling\/function problem, which is the very same problem, more transparently stated). And the lack of a causal explanation for feeling (given that telekinesis is false) is the basis of the explanatory gap.<\/p>\n Feelings themselves feel causal, but hardly rational, except in the sense that “My reason for doing it was that I felt like it!” If I say “I withdrew my hand from the fire because it hurt” I am not explaining why I removed my hand: the explanation of our nociceptive performance and capacity is based on the properties of fire and tissue, the evolutionary history of our species, the neurology of our sensorimotor systems, and our history of experience (including what we have seen and been told about the effects of fire). That’s all functing. The unexplained part is how and why pain feels like something.<\/p>\n By the way, a functional story similar to the one I told about why I withdrew my hand from the fire can also be told about why I pay my debts. I have reasons, of course, some historical some verbal. But the explanatory gap is explaining how and why that reasoning is felt rather than just functed.<\/p>\n RL:<\/b> “Why are we aware of feelings?”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n